Surgery is a medical procedure that may involve the removal of a diseased tissue, repair of the damaged tissue, or examination of the tissue to determine the type of disease.
The scope of surgery has increased remarkably in this century. Its safety has increased too.Operations are now being carried out that were not even dreamed of fifty years ago.Many developments in modern surgery are almost incredible.Today..
* The heart can be safely opened and its valves repaired. Clogged blood vessels can be cleaned out, and broken ones mended or replaced.
* A lung, the whole stomach, or even part of the brain can be removed and still permit the patient to live a comfortable and satisfactory life.
* The replacement of damaged blood vessels with simulated ones made of plastic; the replacement of heart valves with plastic substitutes; the transplanting of tissues such as the lens of the eye; the invention of the artificial kidney to clean the blood of poisons at regular intervals and the development of heart and lung machines to keep patients alive during very long operations all are quite easily possible today.
* Another revolution in surgery science is organ transplantation. Until a few years ago, no person, except an identical twin, was able to accept into his body the tissues of another person without reacting against them and eventually killing them. Recently, however, it has been discovered that with the use of x-rays and special drugs, it is possible to graft tissues from one person to another which will survive for periods of a year or more.
Kidneys have been successfully transplanted between non-identical twins. Heart and lung transplants have been reasonably successful in animals, though rejection problems in humans have yet to be solved.
All these things open a hopeful vista for a great future of surgical Science.
